This invention relates to a method and system for conducting financial transactions using payment cards having account information stored therein and readable by two different technologies.
In today's marketplace, payment cards—such as credit, debit, and prepaid cards—are ubiquitous methods of payment. As used in this application, the term “payment card” includes not only payment cards in ISO 7810 ID-1 form factor, but also any other form factors that may hold payment account information, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and key fobs.
Most payment cards in use today use a magnetic stripe on the card to store payment account information for authorizing a transaction. Typically, to authorize a payment, the payment card is swiped through a card reader that reads the account information from the magnetic stripe on the card.
A drawback associated with the use of a magnetic stripe payment card is that it may be relatively time consuming and/or difficult to handle for certain applications. For example, when a consumer desires to pay for gasoline at the pump, the consumer typically wishes to conduct a fast transaction. The fact that a consumer must align the magnetic stripe on the payment card in the correct orientation for a card reader and swipe the payment card in a certain direction with a certain velocity means that a consumer must often fumble with the card to align it properly and may need to swipe the card more than once before the card reader is able to properly read it. In this situation, therefore, a conventional payment card may not be as fast and/or convenient a payment mechanism as a consumer might desire. The same also applies to purchases of fast food at fast food restaurants and convenience items at convenience stores.
To overcome the lack of speed and/or handling convenience of payment cards in the situations mentioned above, some companies have introduced other methods of payment. For example, the Exxon Mobil Oil Company has introduced the SPEEDPASS device. The SPEEDPASS device uses a radio frequency (RF) transmitter. that transmits an identification code to an RF receiver installed either at the gas pump or at a payment register. To use the SPEEDPASS device, a user waves the device in close proximity to the RF receiver at the pump or register and waits for a light to indicate that the RF receiver has received and processed the identification code.
While convenient, the drawback with RF payment devices is the possibility of unauthorized reading of the identification information from these devices. That is, a person may utilize a concealed or camouflaged RF reader to steal the identification information from a user's RF payment device and use the stolen information to later conduct fraudulent transactions. To avoid unauthorized reading of the identification information, the information may be transmitted in encrypted form. Secure encryption, however, can be complicated and/or expensive, especially if a global deployment and global acceptance of payment cards is desired.
In addition, another drawback to the SPEEDPASS device is that it is only usable in a closed loop acceptance system (i.e., it is only usable at Mobil-supported terminals). It does not have the global acceptance of a payment card usable within a global payment network, such as the BANKNET network operated by MasterCard International Incorporated.
Therefore, there exists a need for a payment device and mechanism that is quick, easy, fast and secure and globally interoperable.